Tobacco.org

DEMOCRATS WILL TRY to revive part of the Senate tobacco bill by adding to other legislation an amendment that would take antismoking steps without busting budget caps. It would include cigarette-ad restrictions and new regulatory power.

House Commerce Chairman THOMAS BLILEY of Virginia, whose panel was one of the most successful in the last Congress, found himself undercut when he attempted to pursue a bipartisan approach to tobacco and teen smoking. Like nothing else this year, the history behind the meeting between Mr. Bliley and the House leadership in May shows the problems facing House Republicans.

This is what passes for bad home state news where John McCain is concerned: A poll of Arizona voters released last week by KAET-TV found that the Republican senator's negative rating had soared -- to 25 percent. His positive rating was 61 percent. . . "The tobacco thing became a tax issue, and that hurt him where he was weakest, which is in the conservative base," said Jason Rose, a Republican consultant here.

The breakdown in talks, however, occurred over the states' demands for an upfront payment of about $20 billion, twice the amount the companies offered in the June 20 deal, according to a source familiar with the industry's position. An official from one state involved in the negotiations, who asked not to be named, said the industry was "looking to get out cheap, and they thought they had a bunch of eager puppies, and it just wasn't happening."

"The industry is moving full speed ahead," Black said. "We expect an announcement to come sometime late this summer." Martin Feldman, an analyst with Salomon Smith Barney, said that the talks are in an initial phase. "This is not anywhere near a done deal," he said.

The tobacco industry is discussing settling the rest of the lawsuits by states trying to recover the costs of treating sick smokers, according . . . to a report Thursday by tobacco analyst Gary Black of the investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. There was no independent corroboration of Black's report, despite calls to state attorneys general suing the industry, anti-tobacco lawyers and members of Congress following the issue.

GEPHARDT . . . used the same analogy to describe the GOP's tobacco bill, which would try to curb teen smoking but leaves out several elements of the tobacco bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) but killed last month. "It's a fig leaf, a tobacco leaf," Gephardt said. Smith said of the GOP tobacco proposal, "The question is, if this was a real effort, why is it taking so long?"

Move over tobacco. Here comes health care. . . "We have long recognized that the single best issue we have in our arsenal is patient protection," says Mark Mellman, a pollster . . "The patient protection issue is a better issue overall nationally but I think tobacco will be a salient issue in some districts," says Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas . . . In a recent special election in New Mexico, says Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., Democrats "didn't even have an advertisement on tobacco. They had one on every other Democratic hot-button issue," he said.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, said his tobacco legislation is tough on cigarette makers, but they will have to support it. "(The tobacco companies) won't like it, but they'll have to get on board because it is the last train leaving the station," Hatch said of the bill he and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., are sponsoring.

Sen. KIT BOND's vote against the national anti-tobacco legislation may be the smoking cigarette of the 1998 U.S. Senate campaign. Bond has not offered a credible reason for being against this bill, particularly when he claimed that the issues bothering him were high taxes and making lawyers rich.

What would really simplify the debate would be to let FDA fully regulate tobacco advertising and the content of cigarettes and other tobacco products and the marketing issue will take care of itself without the immunity and big dollar distractions. It makes sense and it's simple on paper, but get those "mute" buttons ready and brace yourself for another "Big Government" ad campaign brought to you by "Big Tobacco." Unfortunately, they haven't stopped running the other one.

As 37 other states negotiate with the tobacco industry to settle lawsuits over the cost of treating sick smokers, North Carolina's attorney general is pushing the General Assembly let him sue the tobacco companies as well. But legislators say that isn't likely. Attorney General Mike Easley was involved in talks in New York this week between tobacco companies and attorneys general from at least five states, according to several national newspapers.

Having declined Congress's tough terms for a settlement, cigarette makers have a softer option, reports Richard Tomkins It's Plan B for the US tobacco industry - and this time there is a chance it may work.

Note: These articles wink in and out of existence with the frequency of sub-atomic particles. Many links will be dead. In that case, these pages can be approached as bibliographies, both noting the event, and showing where you might look for further information.

Tobacco: The Senate killed comprehensive anti-smoking legislation that would have raised the price of cigarettes by $1.10 a pack and imposed strict new regulations on the tobacco industry. House Republicans hope this fall to enact a more modest plan that would fund a new anti-smoking ad campaign and encourage states to enact laws to discourage teen smoking. Resurrection of the broader Senate bill is considered all but impossible.

State officials and cigarette makers are "only $4 billion or so apart" in striking a $200 billion deal in new tobacco talks, sources said yesterday. Tobacco industry analysts already are talking about a 35-cent increase in the price of a pack of cigarettes over five years to finance the deal, which is being hammered out in secret talks. The negotiations in Manhattan broke off Wednesday night over money but are expected to resume, possibly as early as next week, sources said.

So far, it would be a deal that leaves out some of the hardest-hitting reforms aimed at reducing teen smoking and would include only a modest cigarette price increase of 35 cents a pack, instead of $1.10. That's unacceptable to John Banzhaf of the anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health. "We're very concerned that all the talk is about money, not protecting kids," said Banzhaf. "Kids, not dollars, is what they should be concerned about."

A multibillion-dollar legal settlement that state officials and tobacco executives have been trying to negotiate would not do enough to crack down on the industry and stem teenage smoking, the White House said yesterday. While taking care not to criticize the state officials involved in the discussions, the White House said only a national program enacted by the federal government would satisfy President Clinton, who has made tobacco regulation a key issue during his administration.

"We'll come back and we'll come back again and again over the course of the coming months" with new anti-smoking proposals, said Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. By 55-43, the Senate killed Daschle effort Tuesday to attach McCain's bill to unrelated legislation -- this time, a measure to fund the agriculture department.

After spending months defending their decision not to offer health care legislation or an anti-tobacco measure, Republicans are putting the final touches on bills addressing these two concerns. Democrats have already attacked both proposals, which have yet to be formally introduced, as failing to . . . reduce smoking among teenagers.

Attorneys general from around the country decided Tuesday to fight Big Tobacco individually and as a group, pursuing lawsuits state-by-state while simultaneously negotiating a multibillion-dollar settlement. After a nearly five-hour, closed-door session that came during an annual meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, the officials said their work also will include pressuring Congress . . . "We want Congress to get the job done that they were supposed to. We're going to move forward with our litigation and we're going to be ready to go to trial. And we're also going to move forward with discussions with the industry."

The attorneys general are set to meet today during their national conference to discuss details of a possible settlement of suits against tobacco companies for reimbursement of the states' costs for treating sick smokers. . . Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton said she was optimistic the states would reach some kind of agreement in today's meeting, which was closed to the public.

In the recent talks aimed at reaching a new tobacco settlement, the best clues to strategy were probably found in the five state attorneys general with whom the tobacco industry chose to negotiate. . . So, not surprisingly, among the five attorneys general at the recent talks was CHRISTINE GREGOIRE of WASHINGTON, the state with the next case scheduled to go to trial and one that is considered weak. Also present were attorneys general of COLORADO and of the nation's two largest states, NEW YORK and CALIFORNIA. And although his state has not sued the industry, MIKE EASLEY of NORTH CAROLINA participated as well. He was heavily involved in negotiations that led to last year's $368.5 billion proposed settlement.

The tobacco bill would have stripped a legal industry of its First Amendment right to advertise -- to adults -- setting a dangerous precedent destined to haunt other legal businesses, with gambling top on the list. Campaign finance reform? The version the Democrats want represents a grotesque violation of the constitutional rights of people to express their political views by giving money to or supporting like-minded political candidates. . . The GOP has many good reasons for "doing nothing" to advance Mr. Clinton's and the Democrats' "progressive agenda." It should be a plus, not a minus, for the Republicans come November.

This only encourages Washington to think of advertising as the new instant remedy to fool voters into believing that it is addressing intractable problems; Speaker Gingrich, proposing a new tobacco bill to replace John McCain's, has already suggested that anti-smoking ads be its centerpiece. What's next? An ad campaign to brainwash Americans into believing that they can trust their H.M.O.'s? It's enough to make you pine for the usual government gimmick of appointing blue-ribbon commissions to finesse hard policy questions

White House spokesman Mike McCurry said that while there is "good, strong support" on Capitol Hill for tobacco legislation, "I think everyone recognizes that that issue is stuck, for the moment, and we're looking at ways to see if we can get it unstuck." "We haven't downgraded our desire for it," he added, but, "The prospects, you would have to factually say, have been downgraded, sure."

Likewise, Republicans have killed tobacco legislation by agreeing with the tobacco companies that the proposed cigarette tax hike of up to $1.50 a pack is a tax increase on some of society's poorest. The public no longer is demanding a tobacco bill because it isn't convinced legislation or even a much higher price for a packet of cigarettes would reduce teen smoking.

So if tobacco companies are in the doghouse, smoking increasingly unpopular and efforts to curb smoking by the young almost universally applauded, why was the defeat of S1415 not widely deplored? There are three main reasons -- and tobacco-industry advertising and public-relations efforts are not among them. . . In many ways, the political community's misunderstanding of public views on the tobacco bill is an exact replay of its misreading of opinion on health-care reform and the Clinton plan in the 1993-94 debate.

Attorney General CHARLIE CONDON says he has revived talks with cigarette companies in an effort to settle South Carolina's lawsuit against the cigarette industry. In a news release issued from Durango, Colo., Condon said he and "other attorneys general have entered into negotiations with the major tobacco companies to resolve their respective suits in a joint settlement."

A confab of attorneys general meeting in Durango, Colo., this week brought each other up to speed on secret meetings with cigarette makers and retooled their strategies for dealing with the formidable tobacco industry. And health and tobacco education advocates in Utah ‹ who are carefully monitoring the Durango meetings ‹ are urging officials not to give away the store in negotiations with Big Tobacco.

The collapse of the tobacco deal in Congress has prompted new talks between the cigarette manufacturers and state attorneys general. The last time those two got together, farmers got the shaft. Growers were the only affected group offered nothing in the settlement. That must not happen again. . . Any settlement should include a mechanism for compensating American growers as the demand for their product declines. This would give the cigarette-makers an incentive to keep buying domestic leaf and cushion the economic blow to rural communities.

Attorney General MIKE EASLEY keeps trying gamely to put the state in the same ballgame with other states in any new round of multibillion-dollar negotiations with tobacco companies over health-cost litigation. But he is struggling against a 1995 legislative provision denying him the simple justice of being able to sue for a slice of any deal that might be cut by state attorneys general. . . Polls indicate that North Carolinians really differ very little from folks in other states in their attitudes about the smoking-and-health issue. They support strong efforts to recover health-cost millions, as well as curbs on teen-age smoking. Despite this evidence, the General Assembly isn't likely to change its ways -- unless the public grabs it by the collar and shakes hard. Meanwhile, Easley is carrying the right banner. If the public will rally to it, North Carolina could receive its rightful share of the stream of millions from its sacred cow.

If some genuine commitment underlies the rhetorical calls of Republican and Democratic politicians to curb childhood smoking, a phoenix may yet arise out of the ashes of the Senate debacle on tobacco legislation. It would be a lean, two-page bill that raises the price of a pack of cigarettes enough to discourage children from starting to smoke and gives the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate ingredients in cigarettes.

This makes for one heck of a vicious circle: Congress continually fails to outlaw an addictive drug that poses health threats to its users and to those around them, largely because of heavy marketing and lobbying expenditures by the tobacco companies. And now, Medicaid programs nationwide are trying to dig even further into those deep pockets in an attempt to remedy the consequences. You could laugh until you choked. But legally, it's just not right. Meanwhile, on another front, federal prosecutors appear to be getting closer to filing charges . . . Unlike Medicaid, these folks are attacking from the right direction: . . . And who knows? If they bring the right information to light in the process, maybe Congress will see fit to re-examine its stance on tobacco in general

Having shot himself in the foot by tacking an unpopular tax increase onto popular anti-tobacco legislation, Clinton has no central theme to rally voters to his agenda. Like Ronald Reagan in 1986, he's done what he came to do and is basically out of ideas. Neither Medicare expansion nor child care has caught on as a compelling issue. Only tobacco reform is a truly national issue. By letting tobacco legislation be equated to tax increases, Clinton killed his golden goose.

• 07/24/98 OUR VIEW: States Can Still Cut Tobacco Deal
  
  Actually, the states hold a much stronger hand than they did last year, if they're willing to play it. In the time since the last deal was sealed, four states have settled on their own with the industry. Notably, each successive settlement was tougher than the last, as states honed their arguments, took advantage of documents uncovered in previous cases and built on the earlier victories. . . About 36 state lawsuits remain, which helps explain the industry's eagerness to settle the remaining suits in one fell swoop. The AGs need to take advantage of that eagerness to demand tough, loophole-free concessions from the industry upfront.
• 07/24/98 Tobacco Target Of Extortion Robert A. Levy
  
  The remedies are simple: Enforce those laws, and let parents know when their kids are caught smoking. Most of all, remind our attorneys general that the rule of law is the bedrock of civil society. When it gets perverted - especially by those we entrust with its enforcement - we're all at risk. If the state can prove that a Medicaid recipient relied on industry misrepresentations and became addicted before age 18, it is entitled to recover smoking-related health costs. But once teen-agers become adults - who may go to war, vote, marry, get divorced and have abortions - they are responsible for the consequences of their conduct.

Leading House Republicans are near agreement on a bill to crack down on teen smoking that would give the government limited authority over the manufacture of cigarettes and cap legal fees in tobacco-related lawsuits, officials said Tuesday. These officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the centerpiece of the bill will be an advertising campaign designed to discourage teen smoking, at a cost of slightly less than $200 million for the first year. In addition, the measure is expected to restrict minors' access to cigarette vending machines.

Together with former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, Koop demanded a higher levy on smokers and opposed limits on the industry's liability. He thereby helped alienate fiscal conservatives and the tobacco companies, whose opposition ultimately sank the bill. I was rooting for him all along.

A spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee said lawmakers were only operating within the confines of a bipartisan, balanced-budget agreement now that the tobacco tax and other revenues Clinton relied on for some $9 billion in his budget have not materialized. "What we were forced to do is re-prioritize spending and we did the best we could to take care of a number of programs," committee spokeswoman Elizabeth Morra said.

Perhaps, as many observers suggest, it's because the industry wants to ensure that the Republicans hang on to their House majority in the November congressional elections, and because it can best aid the GOP by crafting "issue" ads that stress generic party themes. . . Tobacco spokesman Scott Williams said . . . "We're watching our backs, to make sure the politicians don't try to put this [ big tax ] back on the radar screen. We've got to be vigilant on this. . . ." . . . As tobacco-industry lawyer J. Philip Carlton said the other day: "You can bet we're advertising, and you can bet we'll continue to advertise."

State prosecutors and tobacco companies may be talking, but they are not close to reaching a national settlement over smoking claims, RJR Nabisco Chairman STEVEN GOLDSTONE said Friday. ``As far as I'm concerned, I don't see anything imminent in that area at all,'' Goldstone told reporters after delivering a speech at a weekly speakers forum.

Saying he would "never, ever, ever, ever give up," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., refused Thursday to admit defeat in the battle to pass comprehensive tobacco legislation. . . McCain said both sides of the issue, public health organizations and tobacco companies, may have sought too much. He blasted the tobacco industry's ethics in launching the $40 million ad campaign that he said culminated in the defeat of the legislation. . . "I believe in the goodness and decency of American people. I believe that the American people want our kids not to smoke. We don't want to see them die."

"The Republican legislative proposal now being drafted runs directly counter to widespread public opinion which favors strong action to protect children," said Bill Novelli, Campaign president. Large majorities of voters, regardless of party affiliation, support FDA authority to regulate the manufacture, sale and marketing of tobacco products. Fully 87 percent of all registered voters agree that the FDA should have the authority to regulate the way tobacco is sold, such as requiring ID checks for younger buyers, requiring tobacco products' placement behind the counter, and limiting vending machine sales.

House Republicans have sidetracked legislation to curtail teen smoking at least until September, according to congressional officials, amid internal debate over whether to abandon the measure entirely.

As negotiators make progress toward a revised national tobacco settlement, farmers are at risk of having to pay for the cigarette companies' past misdeeds. . . Anti-smoking activists have recognized that devastating rural communities would harm public health. The state attorneys general should see this too and demand some protections for farm communities against the cigarette companies.

The National Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reduction Act, known as the McCain tobacco bill, had four components to attempt to reduce youth smoking. It ensured everyone be informed smoking is unhealthy; imposed a huge tax on cigarettes; banned advertising to youths; and banned sales of tobacco to countries that don't control smoking among youth. Each of these provisions is wrong-headed.

Regrettably, because of the big bucks spent by the tobacco industry for diversionary tactics, including misleading advertising about big taxes and increased government spending, the public health message got lost in the McCain bill debate. Unfortunately, advertising works, and tobacco companies spend nearly $5 billion a year to promote their products. Much of that advertising has been targeted to young adolescents. . . Which leads us to the House Republican proposal. Based on the set of principles released June 25, the legislation will address teen smoking and other substance abuse, but still falls short. . . We need to stop playing politics with the future health and welfare of our children and pass legislation now.

A CONGRESS that has spent all year carefully accomplishing almost nothing now leaves town for a month's vacation. The Senate began its August recess Friday; the House is to follow this week. Having killed tobacco legislation, danced around campaign reform, sidestepped the managed care question, brushed aside the president's child care proposals and failed even to agree on a budget for the fiscal year ahead -- well, they need the rest. . . You look in vain for much else. It isn't over yet, but thus far this is a Congress mainly memorable not for what it has done but for what it hasn't.

The MONICA Effect helps explain why CLINTON made nary a peep while the Senate slowly strangled campaign-finance reform--a legacy item if ever there was one--and why he sat idly in June as Senator John MCCAIN's tobacco bill went down. Tobacco was Clinton's top domestic item for 1998--not just because he wanted to be the first President to face down the industry but also because the estimated $100 billion that was to come from McCain's bill in the next five years would have paid for many of Clinton's other ideas, such as preretirement Medicare and child care. Yet when Senate majority leader Trent LOTT set about killing the tobacco bill, Clinton did nothing.

Within days after SEN. CHARLES S. ROBB helped kill a sweeping tobacco-control bill, executives and workers from giant cigarette-maker PHILIP MORRIS showered him with $10,000 in campaign contributions. Sixteen Philip Morris employees made individual donations totaling $9,000, and the Philip Morris political action committee gave another $1,000, in the two weeks after the Senate jettisoned the $516 billion tobacco bill June 17.

"A regular consumer of news and news-like programming who believed the broadcast ads by both sides would be seriously misled by the industry," said the study by the ANNENBERG PUBLIC POLICY CENTER of the University of Pennsylvania. Supporters of the tobacco bill, designed to raise the price of cigarettes in an attempt to curb teen smoking, were guilty of hyperbole as well, the study found. One ad says the bill will "stop the killing," which, the study notes "suggests that the tobacco companies are deliberately ending human life."

According to Steve Duchesne, a tobacco industry spokesman with BSMG Worldwide, the tobacco industry reviews its ad strategy on a week-by-week basis, and it will continue to air ads like this one "so long as there are politicians in Washington who are intent on bringing up big-government, big-tax legislation" in regard to tobacco issues. A bipartisan tobacco bill (H.R. 3868) , introduced in May and sponsored by Reps. James HANSEN, R-Utah; Marty MEEHAN, D-Mass.; and Henry WAXMAN, D-Calif., is a good example

• 08/07/98 SPOTLIGHT REPORT: Tobacco Resolution Campaign
  
  Ad Buy Stats
• 08/07/98 1998 POLITICAL ADS: Smoky Memories Video & Script Of "Remember"
  
  A coalition of the five leading U.S. tobacco companies paid for and produced these spots in the "Remember" series, which features American citizens critiquing the tobacco tax now under consideration in Congress.

Confident that there is no pressing political need to pass an anti-smoking bill this session, several key House Republicans indicated this week that the legislation was all but dead for the year. The dwindling prospects for even a modest tobacco bill come as the industry is continuing its national advertising campaign against a comprehensive measure, which is running in at least 17 states. It appears targeted at the districts of Republican leaders, including such small markets as Grand Junction, Colo., home of Rep. Scott McInnis, a member of the leadership's tobacco task force.

The U.S. House began its month-long summer break Friday without acting on teenage smoking, an issue that Republicans say has faded from the political radar screen. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, said this week that Republicans decided against bringing up a tobacco bill before the summer break, and that Americans appear to have lost interest in congressional action on the issue. He said Republicans in the House of Representatives still planned to draw up a bill. But Congress has a very busy agenda for September and plans to break for the year in early October.

No one doubts the dilemma facing McCain. His past battles over the issue, as well as over tobacco legislation and pork-barrel spending, have made him unpopular with some fellow Republicans, not a welcome thing for someone with Presidential aspirations. Trent Lott, the majority leader, is as determined to kill off reform as he is to harvest vast sums of campaign money from special interests. . . Every senator knows that the public is disgusted by the way money politics has distorted the electoral system. All the senators need to do is put Americans' revulsion ahead of their own party's addiction. For McCain, this is a moment to add a heroic page to one of the nation's most striking political biographies. Lott and others will be trying to convince him that next year is the smart time to push this legislation. But we believe that in his heart, Senator McCain knows that now is the right time.

I would like to be more like Matt Cooper. Mr. Cooper, a Newsweek writer and moonlighting stand-up comic who does an uncanny Clinton imitation, can spin whimsy out of smarmy. [Mr. Cooper also writes on tobacco--gb] . . . Watching Mr. Clinton in the Rose Garden on Thursday with James Brady, I was reminded of the good that a focused President can do. If Mr. Clinton had not brought the Furies down on himself, through his reckless, selfish behavior, if he had not betrayed family and aides and allies with his vast carelessness, think of all he could have accomplished in his second term. Surely, if he had been operating at full throttle, he could have pushed through Senator John McCain's life-saving anti-tobacco legislation. The last years of the Clinton Presidency will play like a reverse version of "It's a Wonderful Life" -- a haunting vision of all the ways Bill Clinton could have made a difference in people's lives, but didn't.

Tobacco legislation, patient bill-of-rights legislation and campaign finance reform all foundered in Congress as emboldened Republicans kept on eye on the fall elections. "In terms of specific legislative issues, I think the president finds it difficult to be influential at critical moments," said Robert Holsworth, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. "He certainly seems to have lost his moral authority, and his political clout has dissipated." He noted, for example, that at a critical moment in the life of the historic tobacco legislation, Clinton was unable to step into the debate and control it. . . "It's a really bizarre political situation where you have a president with an extraordinary high level of job approval who can't seem to use it as leverage with the Congress," Holsworth said.

House majority leader Richard Armey, beset by divisions within his own party over the powerful election-year issue of youth smoking, is trying to duck responsibility for House inaction by suggesting that the public has forgotten the matter. . . On the contrary, a national poll taken just three weeks before Armey's remarks found 75 percent in support of a strong national tobacco policy aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers. . . The public will need to keep these facts in mind to withstand the barrage of advertising the cigarette companies have already mounted to give cover to those who voted against tobacco controls. If Congress refuses to act, voters will have plenty to pique their interest in November.

Pray that Congress, with strong prodding by former customers of the tobacco industry, will pass appropriate legislation that will deal with the needs of the ill victims of addictive cigarettes. However, before then, we should look at a shopping list, short and expensive, on behalf of the people with these tobacco-caused disorders. It can be condensed into just three items: * Serious and expanded new research is urgently needed to find cures for the lung-health problems caused by tobacco addiction . . . * Adequate money for Medicare and Medicaid is needed to pay for lung reduction and replacement surgery for all in advanced stages of COPD; and, * We need to investigate and resolve a potentially serious dilemma caused by the reduction of oxygen cost reimbursement by Medicare

Members of Congress must be held accountable by the public for their inaction on tobacco reform. Urge your House members to hold their ground. They have a choice to make: kids or tobacco. True representatives of the people shouldn't let Big Tobacco scare them. No past or potential campaign contributions, no delays and no multimillion dollar ad campaigns should affect their decision. We must demand that our elected officials keep the faces and futures of our nation's most precious resource ‹ our children ‹ before them.

Congresswoman MARCY KAPTUR is smoking mad at the tobacco industry, and is lighting up an effort to fight back against an aggressive industry advertising campaign opposed to higher federal taxes on cigarettes. . . She has introduced a bill to eliminate the tax deductibility of such ad campaigns, though she acknowledged the bill may never get a hearing. . . "When I sent my staff around to figure out how much money was being spent, I was floored," Miss Kaptur said. "This is my way of saying to the tobacco companies ... we are not going to sit down and take it. I take particular offense when these dollars are spent to sway an unsuspecting public and when there is no counterbalance of interests who have the financial power to command equal presence on the airwaves."

Republicans in Congress have left for their summer vacation deeply divided, fighting among themselves as hard as they fight Democrats and unable to fill the policy vacuum left by the hobbled Clinton presidency. . . House Republicans now say they may not move forward with their own scaled-back antismoking bill, which they promised when the Senate legislation to regulate tobacco died. "Trying to craft a bill that will garner a majority has been elusive," said Rep. JOHN BOEHNER of Ohio, chairman of the House Republican Conference.

Rep. Jim Hansen says he may drop a proposed $1.50-per-pack cigarette tax from his tough tobacco reform bill to give it a chance ‹ maybe a good chance ‹ to pass the House. Jim Hansen If that happens, Sen. Orrin Hatch, a leader of opposing forces seeking less strident reform than Hansen is pushing, says he and other senators will "work with House members to see if we can get a compromise and pass it this year." Still, Hansen and Hatch had a lively debate about each other's different reform bills

According to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), Congress is unlikely to pass tobacco legislation within the next two years. Speaking at a GOP fund-raiser in Lexington, Kentucky, on Sunday, Lott stated, "I don't see a big, global type settlement being ratified by Congress."

Is there any way to control the tobacco industry? That's the question rumbling through the White House, Congress, and the antitobacco groups now that it appears the industry has won another round in the tobacco wars. . . "What we have now is a really ugly stalemate," says Bill Novelli, the head of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington interest group.

"If somehow this diminishes the president's ability to govern, that's the risk for Gore," said one of the vice president's closest confidants. "If the economy is not doing well and Democrats are seen as unable to get anything done, then that doesn't bode well for the race in 2000." . . Among the issues that play to core Democrats but are virtually dead for this year: anti-smoking legislation, a race initiative and an overhaul of Social Security. The Gore camp hopes to pin the blame on the GOP-led Congress. . . That may work for a few months, Jones said, but two years of Washington gridlock would be a millstone for Gore in 2000. "That's how Clinton got into office."

Though Senate Republicans killed tobacco-control legislation two months ago, cigarette makers continue to air television ads in living rooms across the country. The message seems unmistakable: Lawmakers who want tobacco controls must not care much for your average working stiff, who is bound to retaliate at the polls this November. In fact, the message may not be what it seems. The object may not be to attack lawmakers who want tobacco controls, but to protect those who fought tooth and nail to prevent them. As they struggle this November to retain their slim House majority, Republicans can ill afford to have the White House and Democrats portraying them as destroyers of anti-smoking legislation

The advertising campaign by the five largest tobacco companies in opposition to the legislation is unprecedented. It is the most expensive and sustained issue advocacy advertising campaign ever undertaken on a piece of pending legislation. . . It is the first large-scale issue advocacy advertising campaign with the potential to set the issue agenda for the November elections.

The issue of how to curb teen-age smoking -- which is once again on the uptick -- is a serious one. The pared-down bill would include dollars for anti-smoking campaigns and FDA oversight would mean tougher enforcement of laws precluding sales to and use of tobacco by minors. . . If Congress truly is interested in curbing teen smoking then this is the time to do it.

New talks are planned between the tobacco industry and a group of state attorneys general. . . Get the details in this Morning Edition report from NPR's Adam Hochberg.

Seven months ago, President Clinton rose above the swirl of the emerging Lewinsky affair and delivered a bold State of the Union address that outlined priorities on Social Security, health care, teen-age smoking and campaign-finance reform. Facing a hostile Republican-run Congress and a scandal that won't go away, Clinton has found his wish list largely unobtainable. . . Chances are slim that the Senate will ratify the nuclear test ban treaty and even slimmer that a comprehensive anti-smoking bill, rejected in the Senate, will be resurrected. With tobacco legislation defeated, the money the president counted on to fund education and child-care programs disappeared.

For years, Republicans padded their campaign coffers with millions of dollars of tobacco money. Following a $40 million advertising campaign launched at the peak of the SB1415 debate by the top five cigarette manufacturers, Republicans cast SB1415 as a tax increase to be endured mainly by low-income voters. Democrats, including Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, countered that SB1415 was a "tax-cut bill," contending it would save billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid costs for treating smokers, as well as cutting down on lost productivity. Was the proposed tobacco settlement smoke screen or fair play?

"Alice in Wonderland" had nothing on the North Carolina General Assembly. A spokesman for Attorney General MIKE EASLEY darkly warns that the Senate version of a tobacco-related bill would impede Easley's negotiations with the tobacco companies. . . . This controversy isn't about the chump change that the public puts into a tobacco program that is largely self-supporting. It's about people's lives and livelihoods, and the fortunes spent providing medical care to those who, with the encouragement and duplicity of cigarette makers, smoked themselves sick. Somebody in this state needs the authority and the will to act. The lawmakers withhold it at their peril -- and ours.

• 08/25/98 Castle Says Tobacco Bill Is Dead Reuters Headlines
  
  Delaware's lone congressman says proposed tobacco legislation is dead for this session of Congress. Republican MIKE CASTLE says a handful of lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have failed to persuade leadership to take up the issue.
  
  
• 07/19/98 OPINION: Tobacco, Round 2: Save the Kids Joseph A. Califano, Jr, CASA
  
  If some genuine commitment underlies the rhetorical calls of Republican and Democratic politicians to curb childhood smoking, a phoenix may yet arise out of the ashes of the Senate debacle on tobacco legislation. It would be a lean, two-page bill that raises the price of a pack of cigarettes enough to discourage children from starting to smoke and gives the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate ingredients in cigarettes.
  
  
• 08/31/98 The Great Tobacco Money Grab; In The Volatile Debate On Tobacco, There Are No Guys In White Hats Stefanie Ramp, Fairfield Weekly
  
  However, the truth is, anti-tobacco zealots prosper from the tobacco industry. In fact, the industry provides so many billions of dollars for state and local governments, health organizations, arts, education and charitable causes that no sane politician would ever really want to slaughter such a sumptuous cash cow by banning tobacco. Rather, they've realized that the key is to bleed the industry until it's almost dead and then revive it just enough to rape it a little more.
  
  
• 08/31/98 Local Limits on Tobacco Stefanie Ramp, Fairfield Weekly
  
  The tobacco puritans have infiltrated Connecticut and New York, leaving a trail of exasperated smokers in their wake.
  
  
• 09/02/98 LETTER: Smoking Laws Sam Gidding, M.D., Chairman, Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco, Chicago (IL) Tribune
  
  Each of these adverse rulings can be traced to Congress' failure to protect the public from the dangers of tobacco. . . . The ultimate hypocrisy is the tobacco industry's massive campaign against tobacco taxes. In fact, addicting children to nicotine forces them to pay a tax directly to the tobacco companies for the rest of their lives.
  
  
• 09/04/98 OPINION: Why Tobacco Companies Should Pay Christine Kehoe, San Diego City Council, San Diego (CA) Union-Tribune
  
  KEHOE is a member of the San Diego City Council. She is the Democratic candidate for the 49th Congressional District. During this campaign cycle, big tobacco companies funneled at least $8,000 to San Diego congressional campaigns: $6,000 to Brian Bilbray, $1,000 to Duke Cunningham and $500 to Duncan Hunter. Why are big tobacco companies so supportive of Bilbray, Cunningham and Hunter? Because Bilbray, Cunningham and Hunter have done nothing to support meaningful regulation of the tobacco industry. Our congressional representatives have ignored overwhelming public sentiment and watched the opportunity to act on tobacco legislation pass them by. . . With only a few weeks left before the 105th Congress adjourns, chances for adoption of meaningful tobacco legislation are slim. San Diegans should contact their representatives in Washington and demand that before they adjourn this year that meaningful legislation forcing big tobacco companies to pay for health-care costs generated by smoking be one of their accomplishments.
  
  
• 09/03/98 EDITORIAL: Tobacco and Mr. McConnell Washington Post
  
  THE ALLEGATION that tobacco companies promised Republican senators advertising support if they voted to kill national tobacco legislation illustrates how a corrupt set of campaign finance laws warps supposedly unrelated policy matters and how the line between issue advocacy and campaign ads is far thinner than campaign-finance reform foes like to pretend. . . Mr. McConnell is the Senate's leading opponent of campaign finance reform and its leading enthusiast of soft-money and issue ads. His assurances to his colleagues of tobacco advertising support illustrate just how abusive is the system he defends.
  
  
• 09/04/98 ISSUES '98: Tobacco USA Today
  
  Democrats hoped earlier this year to trumpet the passage of a landmark anti-smoking bill in their bid to retake the House of Representatives in the November elections. . . The Justice Department, at the request of Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, is studying whether the industry ads violate federal election laws. But the department is not expected to reach a conclusion before the elections. . . "The issue doesn't have legs anymore," says Mike Donohue, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
  
  
• 09/08/98 EDITORIAL: Big tobacco and the GOP Capital Times (Madison, WI)
  
  In fact, it's time to appoint the most aggressive, hard-core, throw-the-books-at-the-crooks lawyer in America to go after those who have bartered away federal policies in return for campaign cash. . . The Department of Justice is currently investigating charges that the nation's leading tobacco companies conspired with top Republican senators before the narrow Senate vote that effectively killed the tobacco bill earlier this year. . . If this is the scenario that played out, then each of the senators present and the tobacco companies could be guilty, in the words of Assistant Attorney General Anthony Sutin, of violating federal bribery and gratuity statutes. We're talking jail time here, folks. So, by all means, let's bring on the special prosecutor. . . so that voters know whether their Republican senator is a crook.
  
  
• 09/08/98 OPINION: CLINTON's Ten Commandments William Saletan, Mother Jones
  
  Turning to a little girl beside him, GINGRICH asked, "Right?" In unison, the children shouted their response: "Yeah!" It was enough to make a Democrat sick. Indeed, President Clinton looked ill as he explained to the press how Republicans had killed the [McCain] bill . . . But Clinton has only himself to blame. . . The GOP has learned its lessons . . . and is now using Clinton's own tactics against him. To decipher what this year's elections are really about, don't waste your time reading progressive or conservative manifestos. Instead, study the script both parties are following: the cynical political commandments of the Clinton era.
  
  
• 09/09/98 National Press Club Luncheon With Former Surgeon General C. Everett KOOP Former FDA Commissioner David KESSLER NPC/Federal News Service
  
• 09/09/98 Court's Leaf Decision Draws Fire Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch
  
  Kessler yesterday sharply criticized a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision on regulating tobacco as out-of-touch with modern science. "They viewed tobacco the way it was viewed decades ago. They didn't understand the basic fact that nicotine is addictive. They didn't understand the science," Kessler, a physician and a lawyer, told a luncheon audience at the National Press Club.
• 09/09/98 Public Health Leaders Blast Congress On Tobacco Reuters
  
  Leading anti-smoking advocates C. EVERETT KOOP and DAVID KESSLER blasted Congress Tuesday for caving in to Big Tobacco, with Koop saying he now has "a certain shame" about being a Republican. Koop, the former U.S. Surgeon General, and Kessler, the former Food and Drug commissioner who is now dean of Yale Medical School, said in an appearance at the National Press Club that they did not regret opposing the deal negotiated last year by the tobacco companies and the states suing them. Neither saw the failure of that deal as a squandered opportunity, and both said the deal had so many loopholes and concessions to the industry that in the long run it would have been regarded as a colossal public health mistake.
  
  
• 09/09/98 OPINION: McCain fears Big Tobacco more than Demo foe Tom Beal, Arizona Daily Star
  
  McConnell, in addition to being the pro-tobacco leader in the Senate, is also the principal opponent of campaign-finance reform. He has led the battle to kill or filibuster several different versions of campaign finance reform. Little wonder. If McCain-Feingold passed, pro-tobacco senators like McConnell would have to fight tobacco's cause without tobacco's money. It's tough to argue for tobacco on its merits. It took "the most expensive and sustained issue advocacy advertising campaign ever undertaken on a piece of impending legislation" to defeat McCain's tobacco bill
  
  
• 09/10/98 OPINION: Legislation Too Perfect John Hall, Scripps Howard
  
  It's pointless to guess what would have happened if Koop and Kessler, with their enormous influence, had decided to campaign for what was possible instead of perfection. There is every reason to think opponents of the tobacco settlement would have found a way to stop the bill no matter what Koop, Kessler and the anti-smoking zealots in Congress did.
  
  
• 09/10/98 OPINION: The Last Nail In The Coffin For Coffin Nails Cecil Johnson, Fort Worth (TX) Star-Telegram
  
  Congress must renew the effort to stop big tobacco's seduction of the young, because every day thousands of teen-agers nationwide decide to look cool and sophisticated by smoking. And unlike me, most of them get the hang of it quickly, and condemn themselves to becoming slaves to a habit that will kill many of them and cost all of us a bundle.
  
  
• 09/10/98 OPINION: Democrats Scramble To Keep Scandal From Consuming Party Graph in Op-Ed by George Will, Baltimore (MD) Sun
  
  Mr. Lieberman cast Mr. Clinton as injurious to children. Mr. Clinton (like his wife, who believes "it takes a village," the government and herself to raise our children) constantly invokes the vulnerabilities of children to justify paternalistic government (e.g., the tobacco bill) that infantilizes the nation. Thus Mr. Clinton's, and liberalism's, calculating sentimentality about "kids" comes back to bite him.
  
  
• 09/16/98 OPINION: Big Tobacco Isn't Fooling The Public Kevin B. Tynan, Board of Directors, American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago, Chicago (IL) Tribune
  
  Big Tobacco truly believes that people are gullible and will view its television ads or hear them on the radio and be outraged by another tax by the government. The truth is that these ads are a slick attempt to detonate any meaningful tobacco legislation that would keep teens from smoking. . . Big Tobacco has lied and altered the truth about its product and its marketing for years. Protecting public health should be the major focus of any federal legislation, not protecting tobacco industry profits.
  
  
• 09/16/98 EDITORIAL: The Cost to the Democrats Washington Post
  
  This is the Congress that has managed to produce: no tobacco bill; no campaign finance reform legislation; probably no managed care regulation; no increase in child-care subsidies such as the president proposed last winter; not even a budget . . . The Democrats planned, with cause, to charge the Republicans with abdicating their responsibilities. This was the month -- the last before adjournment -- in which the charge was to be hammered home. . . The Senate Republican leadership continued last week to block campaign finance reform . . . The Democrats were counting on these issues -- on the record of the Congress as the ultimate issue. . . . it has been eclipsed by a sorrier one.
  
  
• 09/26/98 EDITORIAL: Blowing Smoke; Guess Who's Paying For Those Anti-tobacco Tax Ads? Lexington (KY) Herald Leader
  
  Cigarette makers have increased prices 27 percent the last year . . . Makes you wonder how much of the recent cigarette price increases went into paying for the commercials. Quite a trick: The cigarette companies stick it to smokers to pay for ads warning that Congress is trying to stick it to smokers through a higher cigarette tax.
  
  
• 09/26/98 EDITORIAL: Blowing Smoke; Guess Who's Paying For Those Anti-tobacco Tax Ads? Lexington (KY) Herald Leader
  
  Cigarette makers have increased prices 27 percent the last year . . . Makes you wonder how much of the recent cigarette price increases went into paying for the commercials. Quite a trick: The cigarette companies stick it to smokers to pay for ads warning that Congress is trying to stick it to smokers through a higher cigarette tax.

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• ©1996 Gene Borio, Tobacco BBS (212-982-4645). WebPage: http://www.tobacco.org).Original Tobacco BBS material may be reprinted in any non-commercial venue if accompanied by this credit

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